Claude Mydorge Reader and Interpreter of Apollonius’ Conics

Abstract

In 1639, the treatise Prodromi catoptricorum et dioptricorum sive Conicorum operis ad abdita radii reflexi et refracti mysteria praevij et facem praeferentis. Libri quatuor priores by Claude Mydorge was printed in Paris. This volume, which followed the printing of his first two books in 1631, has resonance especially in the writings of those who, after him, addressed the conics. This fact raises the question of who Mydorge was and what his knowledge of the “doctrine” of the conics was, what is the most appropriate cultural context in which to properly read this writing, and finally, what is the place of its content in the development of thought placed between the Veteres and the Recentiores. In this paper, I attempt to elaborate an answer to these different questions, with the aim of emphasizing how the author reads and interprets the first books of Apollonius’ Conics. Neither the treatise, nor the figure of Mydorge, have received much attention in the current literature, although he was estimated as a savant in Paris and he was believed by Descartes to be one of the greatest mathematicians of his time.